Atelier Pascale Marthine Tayou
Pascale Marthine Tayou is a traveller and collector. He is also an artist who originates from Cameroon. He lives and works in Ghent, a city in which he settled quite by chance and where he has resided for ten years. As a renowned artist, Tayou has caused international furore with multi-layered installations consisting of ordinary materials gathered together and given new meaning by their treatment and placement in a fresh narrative context. Migration and hospitality, gender equality, the ambivalent quest for identity and origin, the colonial trauma and the processes of postcolonial assimilation, the transcription of knowledge and ancient wisdom, these are all guiding themes in his artistic oeuvre.
In 2017, Tayou purchased a conglomeration of warehouses at the centre of a street block in the nineteenth-century Dampoort district. The following year, he asked BC architects & studies of Brussels to fit this complex out as a workplace and exhibition space. The existing structures were minimally renovated, the roof was repaired and a new work-floor was laid. Internal walls were removed where possible. The only addition by BC is a new and elongated volume: the one structure to have adequate heating and insulation. This construction divides and reorganises the cleared interior: a large studio at the front and a patchwork of exhibition spaces further back in the building. Works-inprogress or in transit are arranged around the studio. The ubiquitous stores of materials, monumental paintings, sculptures and installations all evoke the artist’s enigmatic world.
The rectangular form contains all the basic amenities: an office, a workshop, a storeroom for delicate documents and raw materials, but also bunks, a kitchen and sanitary facilities so that visitors can stay overnight in the studio. It also comprises two long modular frames that act as a supporting structure. The expanded walls have two parts: steel shelving on the outside, where materials and equipment can be stored, and an almost identical rack on the inside, into which fixed interior elements such as a kitchen, sofa and workbench have been incorporated. A skin of compressed hempcrete envelops the interior space and regulates the humidity and temperature. The delicate earth colour, tactility and layered texture of this special material add character to the new volume.
The architectural intervention is clearly defined. BC architects and studies’ exceptional working method, whereby they produce and deploy the building materials themselves, did however present particular challenges in the construction process. The handling of the materials was extremely labour intensive. To reduce the cost, BC extended their remit to include the building process itself. This experiment in construction took shape on the basis of a dialogue between the client, the architects, building professionals and also the various educational institutions where members of BC work. The rectangular volume was executed with the aid of students and volunteers over the course of a five-week summer camp, for which the warehouse complex served as temporary accommodation.
Pascale Marthine Tayou received us when we visited. We were welcomed by a blue neon sign. The vehicle entrance was open. Tayou told his story, after which we were free to wander from one part of the studio to another. This hospitable building invites you to discover the artist’s world.
- Maarten Van Den Driessche
This project is published in Flanders Architectural Review N°14. When Attitudes Take Form.
